Stars · Star in Piscis Austrinus
Star
Fomalhaut
“The mouth of the fish” — a lone bright star in an empty autumn sky, ringed by a vast belt of dust like our own Kuiper belt.
- Constellation
- Piscis Austrinus
- Designation
- α Piscis Austrini
- Apparent magnitude
- 1.17 · 19th brightest star in the night sky
- Spectral class
- A3V
- Distance
- 25.1 light-years
- Position (J2000)
- RA 22h 58m · Dec −29° 37′
A white main-sequence star, around 9,300 K, like Sirius and Vega. About 140× brighter than the faintest star the eye can see. The light you are seeing left in 2001.
Discovery
A planet photographed inside its ring in 2008 was one of the first ever imaged directly — then it faded, and is now thought to have been a debris cloud from two colliding bodies.